comparison speeds AMD x2 / Xeon

[andywright]

Hi,getting into this, i have now decided my gaming pc (no slouch) is not fast enough.

I am going to upgrade to a duel processor option, but despite being a tech-head who builds his own, I have a question ...

Has anyone seen the comparative speeds of rendering in carrara for ...

• an AMD Athlon X2 duel core 4400+ with 2 GB EC 3200 memory
  
• a 2 processor Xeon 2.8 GHz system with 2 GB EC 3200 memory

Having no duel processor experience, I am not sure if one of these is significantly better (i.e. does AMD new tech beat Intel raw grunt)

I am also starting to think the cheaper option would be to upgrade my standard to a pro version of Carrara and use my exisitng 3 pc (athlon 64 3400+, athon 3000+, athon 2800+) as a network render option...though I am not sure how the bandwith of a G wireless network and differering processor speeds will affect the render efficiency. Any ideas ?

Sorry for such a convoluted and techy question

cheers
Andy

[Sarissi]

I don't care how fast the PCs are, since the G router will slow down the renderfarm with 54 Mbps max on wireless, and 100 Mbps wired.

I have never heard of fighting (duel) cpus. Two (dual) I have heard of. (Using wrong words is a Pet Peeve of mine.)

Performance wise, AMD has always beat the knickers off Intel's overpriced offerings.

Seriously, I don't see how Dual Core or Dual Processors will help you in gaming, unless the games are specifically compiled to use such. Personally, I would go with Dual Opterons (200 series), and that gives you 64 and 32 bit native for 64 bit and 32 bit OSes.

[andywright]

Originally Posted by Sarissi

I don't care how fast the PCs are, since the G router will slow down the renderfarm with 54 Mbps max on wireless, and 100 Mbps wired.

I have never heard of fighting (duel) cpus. Two (dual) I have heard of. (Using wrong words is a Pet Peeve of mine.)

Performance wise, AMD has always beat the knickers off Intel's overpriced offerings.

Seriously, I don't see how Dual Core or Dual Processors will help you in gaming, unless the games are specifically compiled to use such. Personally, I would go with Dual Opterons (200 series), and that gives you 64 and 32 bit native for 64 bit and 32 bit OSes.

Thanks for the answer...and apologies for the poor spelling .... bad day at the office and I have no excuse as a native English speaker

You mistook my initial comment, Dual processors have no benefit for gaming as yet, neither does 64 bit (I only have SuSE Linux 64 bit that takes advantage of that). I am looking to upgrade to dual processors or cores, to try to reduce my rendering time on Carrara, its somewhat tedious while I am waiting for my (initially inept) attempts at animation to render.

I was not sure if the 54 Mbs limit on the G wireless would be a restriction as I was not sure how much data a render farm would be shifting around !

I know AMD generally beats Intel (hence my 3 AMD based machines), but the cost of dual core Athlon and two Xeon processors are similar for my upgrade purposes, hence the question.

cheers
Andy

[Sarissi]

Andy, 'duel' is spelled correctly. hehehe It's like using 'loose' for 'lose': both spelled correctly, but, 2 totally different meanings. This is what I meant about wrong word. ;)

The dual cores have bugs in them, both Intel and AMD. My next PC will be a Dual Opteron setup (Socket 940, 200 series).

I didn't games had caught up with the trend towards dual cpus, cores, or both, let alone 64 bit native.

Dual cpus should render twice as fast as a single cpu: one block per cpu for a given frame.

Think about this: The current standard is 30 frames per second (old is 24). A 10 second shot would be 300 frames to be rendered. This is alot of data flowing through the render farm. In computing, the measurement standard is throughput. This usually refers to the whole Input, Process, Output process via the central processing unit. however, with networks, the connection speed is also factored into the thoughput equation.

So, Gigabit Ethernet adapters, a Gigabit Router (not sure if these exist), or better yet, a Switch, and Cat 6 cable (Cat 5 = 10 Mbps, Cat 5e = 100 Mbps) gives you the best data flow over the renderfarm (more frames rendered per node and less on the Host).

I think you would also need to upgrade to Carrara 5 Pro as well for the renderfarm part.

Oh, I do have a question for you, since you also use SuSE. I use Novell/SuSE Linux 9.2 Pro, and I seem to be stuck with the 'nv' driver, even when the 'nvidia' driver is installed. I do have Mesa installed if this makes any difference. How the heck do I change nv to nvidia so I have hardware OpenGL??? (I got spoiled by Mandrake's method, but they don't support the Quadros, and only a few of the GeForce cards.)

I am running 32 bit here, since I don't have any 64 bit hardware yet.

[andywright]

Thanks for the response. It could be considered a mispelling as my intent was never to have duelling processors, I think cooporative processors are so much more useful ;-)

I will look at the opteron option you mention as that may be my best short term solution. I know it is hard to give benchmarks as it depends on the scene that is being rendered.

Has anyone thought of doing a 'standard' scene so that we can benchmark hardware for the best options within the budgets that amateurs like myself have ? Perhaps we could set one up for this forum and have our equivelent of a 3DMark for Carrara ?

I hope that in release 6, Eovia consider using hardware routines in Graphics cards to speed up the process (either through DirectX such as Truespace has done or OpenGL).

I considered Truespace instead of Carrara for this reason, but I can't live with the interface (I have Truespace 3). I am not really impressed with the OpenGL quality on the Carrara preview render as it does not really render shaders clearly - even with OpenGL 2.0 which my Geoforce 6800GT supports (in fact preview landscapes remind me of an old game on the BBC B - Virus )

Sarissi - I will respond to your SuSE query privately.


Andy

[andywright]

Answering my own question a bit.... but here are some benchmarks for various chip setups including Dual core Athlon processors and Dual chip systems such as Xeons.

Interesting results with Athlon X2 chips doing very well in multithread rendering in 3D Max and Povray, often only beaten by dual Opterons.

Link for those interested .....

http://techreport.com/reviews/2005q2...2/index.x?pg=1

The Dual Opteron option did well (best in most cases) but , IMHO, didn't seem to offer such good 'bang per buck' compared to cheaper options.

I still think a benchmark standard scene for Carrara may be useful as software rendering is so application specific.

Andy

[Sarissi]

Over at Cornucopia3d.com, there are a couple of benchmark topics. Of course, this is for Vue 5. They use an included GI scene rendered to screen at 320 x 200, final settings. My Athlon XP 3200+ 400 Mhz FSB/2 GB DDR400 setup does it in 15 minutes 32 Seconds. This is about typical. However, dual opterons do it in about 6' 30" or slightly less. (Even Esprit will use dual processors). This is only a single frame. Another benchmark topic is for network rendering.

I checked out the link you provided, and it is interesting.

A standard scene for benchmarking would be nice.

You can click on my name and send me a PM or email me regarding the Linux question.

[RenderFred]

Hi everyone,

if you are interested in a Carrara benchmark, just go to my site here : http://renderfred.free.fr/benchmarks.html

if you are interested in a detailed analysis of Carrara 5 Pro network rendering abilities, just go here : http://renderfred.free.fr/tests.html

By the way I am the guy who started the Vue benchmark thread at Cornucopia 3D

Hope it helps

[ewinemiller]

Originally Posted by andywright

You mistook my initial comment, Dual processors have no benefit for gaming as yet, neither does 64 bit (I only have SuSE Linux 64 bit that takes advantage of that).

That's not quite true anymore. There are a few games that do take advantage of the multiple processors. For example, when I'm not building plug-ins I can often been seen saving (or tormenting) the hapless citizens of Paragon city in City of Heroes/Villains. It uses multiple processors. One night I checked and it had spawned 17 threads and keeps my dual xeons humming at about 350-375% utilization. When they released the patch that put that in place my machine played noticably smoother, no stalls when loading textures from disk, that sort of thing.

Also some of the new video drivers from Nvidia claim to have optimizations for dual core CPUs, though I've seen no benchmarks where they've investigated just how much it helped.

The real benefit of dual cores shows itself when you kick off a render in Carrara with multiprocesor disabled, then you hop online with your buddies to play your favorite game at the same time with no loss of performance!

I have a dual xeon 3.0 ghz. If someone wants me to run render on it to compare against a X2, I'd be happy to. I think either selection would make you happy at render time.

Good luck,

[tonytrout]

There is also another test on the french side of the forum, but doing Renderfreds tests and looking through his results convinced me to upgrade to an X2,(a direct swapout for my single core socket) and left me with a leftover A64 to make up a second machine some time soon. Certainly increases the productivity, in fact its a real joy when rendering, although havent noticed anything else speeding up. I opted for the cheapest X2 as the prices go exponential for the faster chips and the speed difs are only linear, and if my wife doesnt find the credit card bill I may upgrade again in 6 months when the prices are more realistic and I can shuffle down my 'slow' X2 to the second machine etc
May not be the fastest kid on the block but it was a cheap swapout and I have an affordable upgrade path for the next couple of years

I dream of a renderfarm.

[tonytrout]

Sorry forgot to attach french link
http://www.eovia3d.net/showthread.php?t=4906